Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition Gives Life

Edna Jackeline Vazquez and Jeff Lung are entrepreneurs

The couple has just officially launched Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition on 18th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood, achieving a goal that the ultra marathon runner has taken as a significant victory in her life.

-Negocios Now

"Life is the most valuable jewel of humanity." There is nothing more significant or important than life. For this reason Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition was born. Vive Healthy is the largest project that my husband and I have created. We have done it all with the desire to serve the community, to help them achieve their personal and professional goals, to help them discover their talents through sports and other recreational activities such as fitness classes and educating through workshops that promote living a happy and healthy lifestyle.

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition was created under a lean model-services business model, where we provide the most value to our customers through innovation, integration and inspiration to live a healthy lifestyle.

I have been blessed growing up in sports since my childhood in my native Monterrey, Nuevo León México. That has continued through to my adult life, helping me achieve personal, professional and athletic goals. The discipline and philosophy I have learned through ultramarathoning has helped me throughout.  This is evident in the groups we have created at Vive Healthy where we have incorporated the dynamic and energy of the participants through sport, music, culture and language ​​to extend their relationships and further reach the mission of Vive Healthy.

The mission of Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition is: to build a strong community based on physical activity and healthy lifestyle education. We have built our foundation on integrity, inspiration and innovation for the development of our services while sharing our values: service, unity, dignity, love, hard work, commitment, compassion, perseverance, experience and leadership.

For this reason I am convinced that sports, besides being an instrument of physical training or development, is a lifestyle that gives you the necessary elements to adapt, grow, socialize and establish goals through hard work and dedication, ultimately leading to the strength, harmony and recognition of our society.

These elements help us build bridges and links between human beings, neighbors, friends, family, co-workers or other institutions to establish a dynamic of growth as part of the evolution in society and the world.

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition has the precise recipe for students to experience social coexistence by providing the opportunity to participate with different cultures and languages while learning new ideologies, beliefs, skills and exploring new areas of interest through sports, art, music and nutrition programs.

My husband, Jeff Lung, a native of Quincy, Illinois found comfort through sports in his childhood and later, his strength in boxing. A 2015 Chicago Golden Gloves champion, he has incorporated boxing in the development of personal programs as well as in the design of group classes. In these programs he uses the training regimen of boxers as the main basis for the dynamics of class.

The results that Vive Healthy provides to the community day by day is social coexistence, adaptation, cultural participation of its members;  the practice of respect, tolerance, understanding, mutual assistance, compassion and love for others. Here at Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition we focus on welcoming everyone in a space where love, fraternity, integration, hard work, creativity, admiration and inspiring one another with everyone’s results and achievements are promoted.

Not all of this happened overnight in some magical way. Vive Healthy is the sum of a group of people who heard the voice of Edna and Jeff expressing their vision and mission for Vive Healthy’s place in the Pilsen community. Among those responsible for Vive Healthy’s creation is Siamak Mostoufi, a Chicago architect and interior designer who also runs ultramarathons; Mark Falanga, a knowledgeable man who heard the vision of Vive Healthy in the spring of 2017 and helped us make this dream come true; and Miguel Gómez of Wintrust Bank, who on that morning just before the winter holidays heard the frustrations and financial complexities encountered by a new business and did all that he could to help.  There is no magic, just preparation meeting opportunity.

We opened our doors on February 5 at 6 am with our first class "Super HIIT” instructed by Jeff Lung.

Life is a journey of stages. Sometimes it advances quickly, sometimes it advances slowly; everything requires patience and intelligence to lead the way.

"Move more, eat healthy" 

965 West 18th Street

Pilsen, Chicago, IL 60608

www.vivehealthysport.com

Ph. 312.624.9947

Running to the next stage “Vive, Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition”

Running to the next stage  

“Vive, Vive HealthySport and Nutrition”

“Our dream, our journey, our work for 2018”

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition

After having crossed through many stages of life with lots of ups and downs, going from one place to another, knocking on many doors – some of which opened and some did not – I realized that understanding the social and professional customs  in the United States was the key to making my dreams come true.  I came to Chicago with $5 in my pocket and I had to decide: am I staying here or am I going back to Monterrey. I adapted to change and I have lived here for almost 12 years now, working in the food industry while acquiring an MBA classes from Robert Morris University. I was able to study there through a scholarship I received from my employer – a company I worked for more than six years. During my time in Chicago, I have also continued participating in what I love most: running ultramarathon races. Above all, I love living life as it is. My daily mantra before heading out to work each day is: "God give me health, strength and wisdom."

I am convinced that taking risks and the desire to move forward has pushed me to continue facing any adversity that comes my way. In 2016, once I finished crossing the four fiercest deserts on the planet through Racing the Planet’s 4 Deserts Ultramarathon Race Series, I understood that the human capacity is infinitely wonderful and it is the most perfect instrument to achieve any dream. More than anything, it is the method through which to reach fullness and happy living. The 4 Deserts consist of crossing 250k of rugged terrain in each of the following: the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Gobi Desert in China, the Namib Desert in Africa and cold, icy Antarctica.  

In February of 2017, while being recognized as one of Negocios Now’s “40 under 40,” I told my husband: “I'm ready, we’re ready. Let's go for the next big journey!” This time it was not an ultra-distance race, but something more wonderful and electrifying – something that moves me every day: the creation of a space for our community where we can share our experiences and knowledge while also helping and serving the community so people lead healthy lives through physical activity and healthy lifestyle education. Thus we created "Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition.”

Currently I can see that our society is looking for places where people can participate in community, where they can socialize and be recognized and accepted while being healthy and happy. I am convinced that ViveHealthy Sport and Nutrition is the place that Pilsen is looking for to meet those communal needs while also developing a culture of well-being.

I have always believed that I am a blessed woman, first because I am alive and healthy, but even more so because I have my husband, JeffLung – a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, ultramarathon runner and boxer and who developed his first business, Iron Lung Fitness, a service of personalized training programs in Chicago that has been successfully running for 5 years now. He also had vision and the desire to educate others on healthy living. So together we put forth our dream to create this space for our community.

Our foundation

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition was founded in earnest in June of 2017. That is when Jeff and I began putting all our efforts into this project.

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition is located at 965 W. 18th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.

My husband, Jeff, is an expert in the fitness service industry, so we have designed classes based on his knowledge and the design of the nutrition workshops are based on my experiences in the food industry.

In addition to work, I am also taking a humanities course on Monday and Thursday evenings as I am sure the information I learn will help me moving forward. Besides that, I am also working on developing a new project that will launch in the summer of 2018 based on my own personal story. Through it all I continue training for my new goals on 2018 in the ultra marathon discipline.

Once we move into the Vive Healthy building I will begin to adjust my activities accordingly to our new schedule.

The inspiration for Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition

In the short term, we wish to establish Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition as a place where we provide value to our customers through innovation, integration and inspiration towards a healthy lifestyle. Our main goal is to offer our clients the right instruments and tools to help them achieve their personal goals and also to form a healthy and strong community based on sports and nutrition.

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition is a business model that is designed to establish an operation that leads the consumer to have a healthy life. This ideology pushes me to perhaps someday execute a franchise strategy, where each neighborhood can have the experience of living healthy alongside a recreational and educational space that includes healthy lifestyle workshops.

Currently, the fitness and wellness industry is in a process of development and growth because we all want to feel good. We all want to be healthy. We want to socialize in spaces where everyone is focused on like minded activities. 

My Love for racing long distances is an inspiration for Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition

Yes, ultrarunning has been a great metaphor for life giving me the ability to meditate and tackle my dreams with optimism despite any hardships that may be around me. I believe that business and ultras are both very hard and challenging and both require a lot of concentration. I am convinced that ultras and business both require taking risks, perseverance, strength, endurance, hard work, concentration, dedication, faith, hope and the audacity to move forward, one step at a time. Running for more than 24 hours or crossing 250k worth of desert pushes you to all your limits. Being successful in something that difficult makes me think optimistically about what we can do with our business.

Come and enjoy this journey with us at 

Vive Healthy Sport and Nutrition in Pilsen Chicago, IL starting January 29, 2018!